I've heard nasty things as far as FE on the Wii. Mostly insofar that it's difficulty can be pretty maddening; a bad enough set up can mean the difference between a hard battle and being stuck on the game completely. That's what I've heard anyways.

Actually, unless you're playing the Maniac difficulty level on the Japanese version there's no way that you'd brick wall in FE10 without doing something monumentally stupid like leaving all your Nihil skill scrolls in your convoy before the final chapters, or purposely gunning for it by killing off all of your non essential characters. In fact, its probably the hardest game to completely screw yourself over with in the series (outside of Awakening) as the game has so many characters, many of whom are crutches, plus you have things like reusable skills, Bonus Exp, and forged weaponry to make anyone's life easier if they're having trouble, and of course, there's the usual stat boosters ready to give someone that much needed bump.

I like TP but I already have it on the GC, and Skyward Sword doesn't look at all interesting to me (the dungeons I saw videos of looked very... big empty room with a bunch of disconnected puzzles just kind of sitting there?). Never played ST5, but I... have it on the PS2.

Everything I've heard about The Last Story from people I've talked is pretty mixed but it... appears to have gotten good reviews? Dice? Aeo? I can't form my own opinion on anything because I am a wage slave and IBM at my soul????????

SS had two point five good dungeons (I liked the sixth one okay) in a game with only six proper ones and one kinda but not really a full dungeon.

The best description I can come up with The Last Story is Final Gears of Fantasy War. It really is much of its own thing and I haven't finished it yet so I can't exactly give an honest opinion about the game.

Saints Row The Third: Recently I've decided it's a lot less fun solo. it's still crazy and great, but it's more enjoyable laughing at all their crazy shit with a partner. I'm still only 43% through, but SRIV comes out today and I've pre-ordered and all that jazz. It unlocked on Steam last night and everyone seems to love it so far. Gonna try to co-op as much of it as I can with my purple-mohawked black chick who's suddenly the US president.

Finished Project Cross Zone. The good news is that no stage after chapter 31 has as many enemies thrown at you as that one did. The bad news is that I'd rather have 100 grunts rather than 30+ boss class enemies. Chapter 40 consisted of nothing but boss class enemies and chapter 41 has a few grunts but wave after wave of boss class enemies, and that's on top of the final boss himself who can almost one shot a unit from full health or MAP over half of the health of the four targets away while sticking nearly every status effect in the game on them. The final boss strategy pretty much comes down to only let those who have Cancel Enemy Counter skills/items attack the boss since it's way too costly to have to patch somebody up again from next to nothing, or worse, have them get targeted by one of the dozen or so boss class enemies kicking around. Thankfully, the time limit for the final stage lets up after you drop the barrier so you don't have to try to game your way through every encounter just to make it through the boss in time.

Basically, Haken and Kaguya (needs less than 50% HP), Toma and Cyrille, Frank and Hsien-ko (needs less than 50% HP), Chris and Jill (needs over 50% XP), Zephyr and Leanne, X and Zero, Bahn, Juri, and the accessory Sandra's Soul have a way to bypass enemy counters and thus are the best units/characters/item in the game. Bonus points for Haken/Kaguya, Frank/Hsien-ko, and X/Zero for also having the Atk+15% skill in some form. Extra credit for Haken/Kaguya for having said Atk+15% skill be part of a multi-skill skill, X/Zero for having ridiculous passives in either auto All Stats+10% when over 120% XP and reduced skill costs when under 100% XP, and Bahn for passing the +1 counter passive.

Anyways, time to continue on one of the many other games I've got running currently.

Toki Tori 2 - Headed towards the volcano. Actually I'm encountering lava already. Game's definitely ramped up the difficulty, but it's still really good about subtly showing you the mechanics of how stuff works.

Still don't get when the electrical bugs are killable and when they aren't.

Ys 2 - Noise dangles get!

Amalur - Got three daggers from some quest. Gonna finish that then do Coilsbane Cavern or wevz.

Something fun about Amalur is how the entire setting kind of... runs on game logic. The LARPing elves. The NPCs' proclivity towards creating appellations for themselves. That you're a guy in a non-linear game who's Cutie Mark is for not being bound by linear fate.

I really like watching the squirrels outside my apartment. Sometimes I meow at them and remember that squirrels don't meow.

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Twilight Princess - Just dicked around in Zora Village a bit. I think I'll do the snow dungeon then give this a break again.

« Last Edit: August 21, 2013, 01:42:59 AM by MeshGearFox »

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o/` I do not feel joy o/`o/` I do not dream o/`o/` I only stare at the door and smoke o/`

Beat chapter 2 with the help of Frederick. I think I am relying on him too much which sucks up all the exp. As I am playing other games at the moment, my strategy is to get the barracks unlocked. Once that happens, I will go on every now and again and collect exp and weapons.

Virtues Last RewardReally fun and I love the flow chart. It totally removed the back tracking that was in 999.

So did you enjoy it? I'm very seriously considering picking this up before I go back overseas.

The battlesystem was nice combination of strategy and button bashing, and it's extra fun if you know most of the characters. However, final third of the game the battles just drag on and on and on... Not much variation either. One you get your final attacks you'll be performing the same combos over and over and over again.

The Last of Us - Damn, this game is brutal. Sometimes in a very real and disturbing way. If this was a movie people would be all up in arms over it.I mean...

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The Ellie sequence. She's stabbing guys to death with a knife. Not in a pleasant video game kind of way either. Then we have her confrontation with the bad guy boss in the restaurant or whatever it was. I got caught numerous times, and every time he macheted her. Then in the end she machetes HIM to bits! DAMN.The exchange after this with Joel is touching, though. The poor guy has gone soft.

I SO know where this is headed, and I'm not excited about it. This game is incredible.

I think I might try out Gone Home after this. Looks very interesting. That Outland game mentioned in the Child of Light thread sounds good, too.

Thanks to the Japanese Developer sale on PSN I now have two more titles to add to my backlog...

Atellier Totori Plus and Muramasa.

Both games I wanted to play, but I figured at the prices they were being sold at with PS+, they were worth getting. Took a 2 hour spin of Totori, and I think I'm starting to grasp the game a bit? Never played any of the Atelier series before, but it seems like fun.

So did you enjoy it? I'm very seriously considering picking this up before I go back overseas.

My thoughts are that if you really enjoy, and are a big fan of, the series being represented in the game, it might be worth getting. If you're not a fan of the included series or don't care enough about them then you might want to give it a pass.

The gameplay is solid enough but the game definitely suffers from the same problem its predecessor Namco x Capcom did in that the late to end game turns into a slog. For reference, I had like 38 hours on the clock when I finished chapter 30, but I ended up with 76 hours when I finished the game at chapter 41. Its not even that the game is difficult, but it is demanding since you can't just skip battle animations like you can in a normal SRPG. Plus you have to have timing and keep a rhythm for battles to keep some measure of efficiency, have to be able to react to when things happen that you don't plan for, and later chapters become marathons that can take upwards to 4 hours to complete apiece. Fortunately, outside of exactly one stage (the one where you have to defeat four golden goblins), you are never in any real rush to complete a stage, even the ones with hard time limits tend to give you way more than enough time to complete whatever task you are trying to do. Unfortunately, pretty much every chapter after a certain point ditches the various win conditions for routes with maybe an added objective or two (fortunately, the final stage ditches the need to keep mission critical units alive otherwise Kogoro/Mii would be absolutely worthless during the stage for fear of getting dogpiled/two-shotted and having the player restart the entire stage again).

Anyways, the game's plot is largely an excuse plot.

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The game's originals' villains' plan basically amounts to "The macguffin created the bad guys to essentially steal itself so that it can build power and merge worlds, all for the sake of reasons...", and this only comes out at the start of the game's last chapter. The game so doesn't take itself seriously that outside of one specific case, any drama the game has is immediately resolved within a minute or two of getting brought up. The overall plot starts with the 4 random prologues, then about 20 chapters of getting the band together, then spending 10 chapters stuck in dotHack's "The World" trying to fix it by finding a bunch of Auras and rubbing them together, then spending the remainder of the game tracking down the various villains who kept showing up and foiling their various plots. Honestly, the most sinister thing the original villains do in the game was eating the deluxe flan from Mii's fridge. As for representations go, I think the Sakura Taisen dude/ettes got the most mileage out of their game's plots, X and Zero weirdly enough got the most specific effort by including a fully voiced Iris for all of two scenes, dotHack got the most mileage out of their setting by spending a quarter of the game in cyberspace looking for Aura, Darkstalkers got the most persistence/visible villains, the fighting game characters are the most amalgamated, while guys like Frank West, Tron Bonne, and the Resident Evil folks got the least attention.

The cast interaction is pretty good though, probably the best aspect of the game and the real reason to get it. In fact that's the only reason why you shouldn't just optimize Solo unit pairings (outside of the gang splitting up again), since the some of the Solo character's reactions to whom they're paired with and vice versa can be pretty amusing (especially the former villains like Juri or evil aligned characters like Princess Devolette De Satan).

I agree it's a slog towards the end, but I never had that much trouble with Project X Zone. It took me 45 hours to finish, with some of the later fights taking 90-120 minutes to complete. I leveled units evenly and never had much trouble keeping them alive. The game is very generous when it comes to handing out low level items. Since you can use as much as you want in a single turn and on any allied unit on the map, it's very easy to get units back to safe health levels.

Recently started Saint's Row the Third for the first time, and also re-started Amalur.

Having a total blast with SR3. Too much fun. I love the extensive character customization. You can some up with some really offbeat and hilarious-looking people. I do miss the different fighting styles from the 2nd installment, but the melee system is still awesome on this one. This game is so much better than GTA IV in just about every way. It's infinitely more entertaining, for sure. The recently released 4th installment looks even more crazy, and I can't wait to try it out, but I don't believe in paying new release prices for games.

I decided to restart Amalur. I've never finished it before, but for some reason, I put it down and forgot about it for a while. This time, I am going all brute force. It's proving to be more fun than the stealth attacks of my last character. Running into the middle of a group of enemies and smashing the absolute shit out of them is gratifying as hell. I'm obviously putting ability points into melee and hardiness. Skill points are mostly going into smithing and sagecrafting. I want this guy to eventually be able to create some killer equipment. I understand it can make the game much easier, and it kind of already has, but I can always wear crappier stuff if I want more of a challenge. Got my dude at level 7 now.